Medical type toys of many types have fascinated children for a long time and one particular type of toy that is of special interest to them is a stethoscope, particularly if the same is provided with means to produce sounds simulating a natural heartbeat of a person or animal. A number of types of such devices have been developed heretofore in an effort to satisfy the need for such a toy, one example of the same comprising the subject matter of recent U.S. Pat. No. 4,155,196 to Bollinger et al, dated May 22, 1979, in which a doll or other toy animal has a permanent magnet concealed therein in the location of a heart and a toy stethoscope includes a probe containing therein a normally opened reed switch which is closed to produce a heartbeat-like sound when the probe is near the magnet. Such a device obviously is relatively sophisticated and somewhat expensive to produce.
Since it is one object of the present invention to provide a device which requires no auxiliary energy, such as an electric current, the present invention includes, among other items, a bellows element which can be manually operated to produce the desired sound. In this regard, in a broad sense, it is old to produce a compressible bulb or bellows-like elements to accomplish certain features in toys of different types. One early example of the same comprises the subject matter of U.S. Pat. No. 369,404 to Heston et al, dated Sept. 6, 1887, in relation to a chance device. Another more recent patent employing a compressible bellows is the subject matter of U.S. Pat. No. 3,093,925 to Greene, dated June 18, 1963, which pertains to a bubble-making toy, having a bellows included therein.
Still another toy somewhat in the simulated medical field is the subject matter of recent U.S. Pat. No. 4,174,588 to Clanton, dated Nov. 20, 1979, in which a toy blood pressure monitoring device includes a compressible bulb, operable against a rotatable vaned member associated with an arm band adapted to be wrapped around the arm of a human and compression and release of the bulb operates a dial.
The present invention has been developed in an attempt to produce a relatively realistic stethoscope with which a sound-producing element is involved to include certain characteristics of medical equipment and, incidentally, produce a sound simulating a heartbeat, the structure of which is believed to be an improvement over the prior devices and details of which are set forth below.